Test Your Call To Action Placement Using Heat Maps

Heat Maps are great visual tools that can easily and quickly tell you if your calls to action are effective or not. Using heat maps will help you to determine if your calls to action are property located, clearly viewable across platforms and easily clickable.

You can also test the effectiveness of call to action placement in various designs and measure usability of your forms and site search using heat maps. These valuable visual tools are a web designer’s best friends because they illuminate and let you correct design flaws. Heat maps are also invaluable when it comes to explaining online marketing concepts to a client that isn’t particularly web savvy.

Some Heat Map Tools

There are two different types of heat mapping tools that can be used to improve your designs and your call to action conversion rates. These are:

Visual algorithm heat maps- predictive/corrective tool

Heat maps that track user’s behavior- corrective tool

First, let’s look at a visual algorithm heat map like Attention Wizard. This tool uses a visual algorithm based on scientific research to analyze your design and predict where your users will click based on visual optimization research.

The visual numbered strings in the following heat map for the site http://www.privatejetscharter.net/ predict where a viewer’s involuntary eye movements will wander on the Attention Wizard heat map in order of #1 being the most important. When visual string sets are too numerous they suggest visual confusion among users and this can lead to reduced attention spans and click through rates. The numbered string data combined with the hot visuals show the optimum design locations to place your calls to action.

In the Private Jet Charter example you can see that the calls to action 1, 2 & 3 are strategically placed to optimize call to action points using both the visual strings and the hot spots on the heat map. The nice thing about using tools like this is that they allow you to optimize and tweak the web design before you fly it for your clients and the world to see. The costs are reasonable ($27-197 a month) and the tool is immediately useable and effective.

The second group of heat mapping tools are actually web analytics tools that allow you to track and graph information visually using heat maps. These visual analytics reveal what has happened rather than what is likely to happen like Attention Wizard. CrazyEgg, ClickTale and Click Density all fall under this category of analytic heat mapping tools. They are all fairly reasonable paid tools. However, the costs can add up quickly and the fees should be included in the maintenance contracts with your clients (especially for large sites). All heat map tools require that you have access to the code so that you can insert the required JavaScript codes on either the site map or on the pages you are looking to track.

A Comparison of CrazyEgg, ClickTale and Click Density

CrazyEgg is one of the least expensive heat map tools but unfortunately their free plans are a thing of the past. CrazyEgg starts at $9.00 a month and goes up to $99 a month. Clicktale will cost you between $99-$790 dollars a month. Clink Density starts with a free 30-day trail followed by plans that cost from about $5.00 to $400.00 a month.

CrazyEgg will track clicks on any page with a little heat spot showing you the clicks on the page including lists and overlays. ClickTale’s maps display hot-colored zones showing you where users spend the most amount of time. ClickTale’s advantage is that it shows you the duration in addition to the clicks. Clicktale also allows you to see real videos of visitors navigating your website. Click Density uses dots and includes real-time filtering and timed heat map analysis.

On the analytics side CrazyEgg gives you the user’s information on a page (including search) and gives you the day and time of the user’s visit. ClickTale gives you more form data including the time of form completion, the number of entries, field abandonment, timed task completion and field backtracking. They then place all this information into a video format for you. Click Density also shows task completion, site analysis and timed decision form analysis. Click Density doesn’t yet support frames. All three sites have a range of analytic tools that you can use to analyze the data. Of the three, ClickTale is filled with the most bells and whistles while Click Density is probably the best value (at the moment).

Heat maps present web designers with valuable visual analytic tools that can be used to predict, track and correct a design so that it matches user’s needs. While traditional analytic tools only show you how well something is working, heat map analytics will show you things that aren’t working like dramatic dead space and field abandonment. These tools will help you optimize the placement of your calls to action and that should increase clicks and conversion rates.

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Nisha Patel

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Nisha is the head blogger for Slodive.com. She loves tattoos and inspirational quotes. Check her out on google plus https://plus.google.com/u/0/116437517919411097994.Nisha Patel's Archive

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